Title: The Road To Badass

Summary: "They left me temporarily, so I'm going to make it permanent." The what-if scenario when Sakura decides to make a stand for herself when the Team leaves her behind yet again.

Disclaimer : I do not own Naruto and it's characters, I am merely borrowing them. However, I do own the delicious heavenly dango worth of Itachi's time and it's owner - Kanbaji-san.

Early Author's note: Thank you guys for the critical reviews, sounds corny but it really does help me. :)

Enjoy

The setting sun casts her rays of gold upon the ground,

As the seedlings of the icy mother of winter melt into life-giving water.

iii.

The morn has come and gone, land is shrouded in the deep blue of the night sky. I have been walking in the deep forest, resting only when the world is too, at rest... between bushes and the largest roots of trees for no more than a sixth of a day at once. At last, a perfect shelter has been found that undoubtedly, will give me ample time to concoct a plan and sharpen it to it's finest point.

The plan is centered around my death in a tragedy of grand proportions to erase my trail off Nobunaga and his allies' map. Once he believes me dead, I shall be free to train and push my limits as far as I dare.

The prideful castaway, Asakyura.

Meditation is a wonderful experience with the right know-how. Purifying, cleansing and extremely underrated. A man who meditated could, with concentrated practice, go from a civilian's status in chakra to a jounin's. It was a tool that was rarely encouraged and never fortified in academies, yet the best of shinobi were masters of meditation. It increased their chakra levels once they were in the correct state of mind, reduced stress and anxiety.. a regular occurrence in the daily life of a fully-fledged ninja.

A simple first step is all it takes. Clearing one's mind is the second and so on from there.

However this night was different. The moon had risen and brightened the night sky to it's best, and was on it's slow descent to make way for the sun, morning was just a few minutes away. One such individual, was still awake with an irregularity in his stomach. The oddest sensation of fluttering wings had appeared hours ago, and they had not left yet. Any normal human being would recognize these feelings, and what emotions they would be associated with.

But we all know that Uchiha Itachi is not a normal person.

The sensation of fluttering wings, AKA known as butterflies in thy stomach to the regular folk was decided upon by genius of the century to be an illness of some sort that had to do with the cardiovascular properties of his heart. Well at least he got it partly right.

The thoughts that ran rampant in his head were easily put away once he had to go on duty, work was above and more important than anything else. However once it was over, finished for the day and his body was relaxed and no discipline could be mustered up to blank out the girl who stayed in the back his head, she had come out and danced in his head with a vengeance worthy of him wincing in any life time but this one.

He couldn't understand the obsession his brain had with the girl and neither could he figure out why. Meditating was a lost cause, instead of relaxing him and replenishing his chakra stores when he didn't really need to, it stressed him out with images of her and her nervous smiles. Her rosy cheeks and emerald green eyes were like a ghost, haunting him once he was alone with only his thoughts.

He had never had an occurrence like this and didn't have a clue what it was or how he ought to deal with it.

Flashback

Nostalgia.

It was a feeling he identified with as contentment in association to a time and place that had lead to memories of happiness.

He wasn't nostalgic of many things. He didn't have friends to miss or shenanigans that went out of balance to laugh about. Being nostalgic was about being happy, after all why would you feel any form of positive feelings if it had not brought you happiness?

And yet he was not very good at understanding nostalgia. One could not be nostalgic of the Hidden Villages when one had been in a war or bloody time with them. He could say he missed the rare, but extremely enjoyable evenings he had once spent walking with his mother to the silk-weaver's bazaar, perhaps even his first bite of dango in a small, now dead stall just away from the market.

But he didn't quite get the feelings he had when he walked into Kanbaji-san's shop. Peace, contentment, the urge for the sides of his lips to lift. It was routine, the four walls of bamboo boards, the old rice-paper screens... they all had a sense of familiarity to it.

He strolled in, assessing the locations of every person and their chakra signature in the store, but allowing his eyes to rest and so ignored their faces. As usual, he sat in his booth that had a scrape on it's corner and a gash on the table's side. A plate each of Bocchan and Mitarashi dango was all he asked for. Simple, but very fulfilling.

Had he been another man, he would have been licking his lips with glee and delight the same way a mad man (e.g. Orochimaru) would.

He also would have been on the edge of his seat until the dango arrived in it's heavenly gloriousness.

His fingers flicked a strand of hair away from his face with all the precision he would have used on a dagger, wiped his fingers and placed the napkin an exact two centimeters and a half away from the plate on the right. Not too far from his reach, not too close to be the victim of any spillage. This, the eating of his ultimate, favorite dango, was serious business, and Uchiha Itachi certainly meant business.

The first stick of dango was held with an exact amount of pressure between his fore-finger and middle finger with his thumb for support. Just as the he was about to take his first bite, a flustered pinkette sat down.

He was drawn immediately to her mesmerizing, emerald green eyes.

The rest of what happened was easily explained, she asked for a favor from him, he complied with a few conditions she agreed to fulfil. It was what happened after that puzzled the Uchiha.

The location where is heart was immediately began thudding, a strange heat consumed his body in random flushes and his palms became sweaty. She hadn't moved, and his expression had only become... even less emotion-revealing as he watched her nibble on the sweet sauce from the peripheral vision of his sight. The excitement in her eyes, the quirking of her soft pink lips... her lips! Why on earth had he noticed her lips? It was unlike him to notice aspects of a female that were not for him to exploit in battle. A slower limb, a lack of complete peripheral vision... hair in their eyes... and yet he had not noticed this on her.

He had thought himself sick, and that her constant appearance in his head was merely coincidence.

Clearly it wasn't.

It felt as though the answer was an obvious one, yet he couldn't place his finger on it.

It was something he had never experienced before.

The choice here was to either avoid the female, and henceforth never understand this odd accumulated, mix of feelings... or to try his utmost to figure it out.

It certainly would be a good time to put together the figurative puzzle of his lack of concentration, random moments he found himself staring at the pinkette and the sudden symptoms of sickness in her proximity that all began the day they 'met' in the dango shop.

A rush of... thrill... raced through him as he contemplated the ways he might catalogue these thoughts, processes... and of him seeing Sakura the next day... or today... it was past midnight after all.

AND DONE.

This was such a pain to write... AND I had exams so forgive me guys.

So.. not much here, I know... a real short chapter but I wanted an Itachi focused one, and since he is generally brilliant at being blur at emotions, and this entirely new breed of emotion, I had no idea how to go about expressing his complete, utter, not to mention adorable confusion.

On a side note.

Has anybody noticed the random journal writings at the top and what it could mean? Anyone curious?

So rate and review guys!